i just want to be tom bambadil...tolkien and ecology

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J. R. R. Tolkien:

Saving the Ecosystems of Middle Earth

 

by Walt Contreras Sheasby

 

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (1955-56) the ring is at

the center of an epochal ecological struggle over the fate of Middle Earth.

Received as fantasy, in its own way this tale nevertheless encapsulates

nearly a century of geological, biological and botanical lore that followed

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species(1859). In particular, Tolkien's work

reflected the emergence of a critical ecology that used the life sciences as

a shield to defend life on earth and to protect every ecosystem. Tolkien's

knowledge of nature was derived from the Victorian and Edwardian

scientists who revolutionized what had earlier been called Natural

History.

 

It seems that the ideas of Sir Arthur George Tansley (1871-1955), who

popularized the term Ecology had a substantial influence on Tolkien

(1892-1973), who was his junior by 21 years.

 

 

J.R.R. Tolkien Sir Arthur George Tansley

 

In 1925 Tolkien was appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of

Anglo Saxon at Oxford University, becoming Merton Professor of

English Language and Literature in 1945. He retired in 1959 and in 1968

the Tolkien?s moved to Bournemouth on the southern coast of England.

After his wife?s death, Tolkien returned to Merton College at Oxford as

resident honorary fellow in March 1972 and died there in September

1973 at the age of 81.

 

While at Oxford, he got to know Tansley. In 1927 Arthur George

Tansley was appointed Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, from

which he retired with the title of Professor Emeritus in 1937. Tolkien

participated in a standing seminar with the senior founder of the British

Ecological Society, who was knighted in 1950 while serving as the first

chairman of the Nature Conservancy from 1949-1953. (1) Tansley died

in 1955 at the age of 84.

 

Tansley took a prominent part in the development of plant ecology in

Britain. In 1901 founded the New Phytologist, an influential botanical

journal which he continued to edit for thirty years. Tansley was also

instrumental in founding the British Ecological Society in 1913, and

edited its Journal of Ecologyfor many years.

 

He published Practical Plant Ecology in 1923. Tansley was the

founder of the concept of the Ecosystemin 1935, defined as *a distinct

unit of interacting organisms and their surrounding environment* in his

book Introduction to Plant Ecology(2). In 1939 he published The British

Isles and Their Vegetation.

 

It is no coincidence that there are 64 species of wild plants in The

Hobbitand the Lord of the Ringsas well as several invented varieties. In

a June 1955 letter to his publisher, the author said, *There are of course

certain things and themes that move me specially.... I am (obviously)

much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and

I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find

ill-treatment of animals.* (3)

 

In a BBC interview Tolkien spoke of his love of trees. Trees occur

often in his stories - The Old Forest, Fangorn and Lothlorien. In a letter

to the Daily Telegraph of July 4, 1972 he wrote: *In all my work I take

the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful

because there the trees were loved.†As to the England of the 1970s,

*The savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees

are still found growng.* (4)

 

It has been pointed out that the flora of Middle Earth is largely that of

the English Midlands. From 1896-1900 the family of the young Tolkien

found lodgings in Sarehole, at that time a village in Warwickshire. In the

biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien is quoted as saying: *To find

oneself, just at the time when one's imagination is opening out, in a quiet

Warwickshire village, engenders a particular love of a central middle

England countryside.* (5) The handyman mill in Sarehole appears in

the Shire Hobbiton, as does the name of the millwright there, Samson

Gamgee.

 

Clyde S. Kilby says, *No book published in recent times creates

a more poignant feeling for the essential quality of many outdoor...

experiences—of flowing streams and the feel and taste of water... of

light in dark places, of the coming of dawn....* (6) As Patrick Curry

says, *What is most striking about Tolkien's Middle-earth is the

profound presence of the natural world: geography and geology,

ecologies, flora and fauna, the seasons, weather, the sky, stars and

moon. The experience of these phenomena as comprising a living

and meaningful cosmos saturates his entire story.* (7)

 

Tolkien once confessed, *I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary

time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. ... The theatre of

my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical

period is imaginary.* (8) There may be no contradiction when Martha

Stevenson Olson says, *But in another sense, the book is nothing except

an allegory for the passing away of England - all England, in every age.*

(9)

 

What gives Tolkien's readers *The experience of these phenomena as

comprising a living and meaningful cosmos ...* (10) may reflect Tansley's

influence. The concept of Ecosystemdeveloped from Tansley's

interest in the plant ecological community, but with the community as an

analog of a physical system. Natural systems involved *constant

interchange* among their living and nonliving parts. The German

theorists called this Stoffswechsel,translated in English as Metabolism.

 

The last fifteen years of Tansley's life were spent promoting nature

conservation in Britain, and although Tolkien was not notorious as an

ecological activist, there is little doubt that he supported Tansley in these

efforts.

 

Tansley had been a student of Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, FRS, the

English translator of Ernst Haeckel (who had coined the term Ecology).

Through his father, Edwin Lankester, M.D., this Lankester had been a

friend since boyhood of Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley and

became very close to Karl Marx by the 1880s. Through a combination of

these influences, Lankester put together a radical ecology that was passed

on to his students, including Tansley, who identified with a Fabian-style

socialism.

 

Lankester was also a friend and admirer of the Marxian theorist,

environmentalist, craftsman, and writer of medieval fantasy, William

Morris, whose influence on Tolkien was very profound. That debt is often

acknowledged, but never placed in the context of Tolkien's ecology.

Indeed, the radical roots of scientific ecology (or scientific fantasy) are

seldom revealed when cultural icons are inducted into the Halls of Fame

of the conservative establishment.

 

But the word still seems to be slow in getting out even in this new era

of animal and plant extinctions, planetary degredation, and ecological

catastrophes. As John Amodeo says:

*Since the trilogy's initial publication in 1954, many have analyzed,

debated, and deconstructed Tolkien on the topics of linguistics, history,

anthropology, sociology, mythology, and war, but rare is the discussion

on Tolkien's environmental commentary, though all the signs are there.

Although Tolkien, who died in 1973, vehemently discouraged using his

books as an allegory for real events, he favored use of them in ways that

are applicable to readers' own thoughts and experiences. Looking

beneath the fun, the action, and the mysticism of Tolkien's fantastic

creation, landscape architects need only observe the ways in which the

forces of good and evil treat Mother Earth to discover that Tolkien wove a

conservationist morality tale within its pages (evident in the films as well)

that resonates strongly in the society in which we practice.* (11)

 

In future articles Amodeo's question, What can we learn about land

stewardship from The Lord of the Rings?will be taken up in detailed

reference to the story and film.

 

 

Footnotes:

 

1. John Bellamy Foster, Re: Tolkein as environmentalist? 18 December

2002 22:49 UTC, www.csf.colorado.edu/envtecsoc/2002/msg00692.html

 

2. J.R.R. Tolkien, Introduction to Plant Ecology, London: George Allen and Unwin.

1935.

 

3. J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co., June 1955. Quotes

J.R.R. Tolkien. http://www.tolkienonline.com/quotes/index.cfm?id=45 & startnum=181.

 

4. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth and

Modernity,New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, p. 65.

 

5. Humphrey Carpenter, JRR Tolkien: the Authorised Biography, George

Allen and Unwin, London, 1977.

 

6. Clyde S. Kilby, *Meaning in The Lord of the Rings.* Shadows of

Imagination: The Fantasies of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles

Williams. Ed. Mark R. Hillegas. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ.Press,

1979, p. 282.

 

7. Patrick Curry, “Defending Middle-Earth,†in Laurence Coupe, Ed.,

The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, London:

Routledge, 2000. Adapted by the author from Defending Middle-Earth:

Tolkien, Myth and Modernity, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997 p. 61.

 

8. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle-Earth, p. 59.

 

9. Martha Stevenson Olson, *In Frodo's Footsteps,* New York Times,

Jan 25, 2004. pg. 5.6

 

10. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle-Earth, p. 282.

 

11. John Amodeo, ASLA, *Hobbit Sense: What can we learn about land

stewardship from The Lord of the Rings?* Landscape Architecture, May

2003. http://www.asla.org/lamag/lam03/may/ecology.html